


The Little Chef

by TheColorBlue



Category: Ratatouille (2007)
Genre: Gen, Otherkin, Remy is the only reason Alfredo doesn't starve, Remy likes grilled cheese sandwiches, multiplicity, plurality, puppet-mastering your puppet, therianthropy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-23
Updated: 2011-10-23
Packaged: 2017-10-24 21:45:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/268221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheColorBlue/pseuds/TheColorBlue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Colette had wanted to know if Linguini was trying to say that there was a "little chef...in his <i>brain</i>," and Linguini had done a little dance of frustration. The truth was complicated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Little Chef

French psychologists didn’t believe in multiple personality disorder.

Remy discovered this when Alfredo was nine, and Remy was a young rodent of indeterminate age, really—calendars were not typically high on the rodent list of important affairs—but Remy, being a fellow of initiative, had gone to the library, of course, and begun a search for the reasons behind the current state of his life.

Remy loved the library, loving the library only second to the kitchen. Alfredo’s mother—well, her career was cooking, working at one of the top tiered restaurants in Paris—so she only indulged in home cooking on very special occasions—but Remy loved to cook. He made quite a mess, typically, and he was still learning his own way, but he loved to cook, and his mother, beaming, had encouraged her adventurous child, and if Remy always seemed a little quiet and, well, strange when he was in the kitchen, all great artists were allowed to indulge in a few quirks.

On the phone, Remy once heard Alfredo’s mother tell relatives, “Oh, yes, I suppose he is a bit old for those kinds of games, but there’s no harm in it really—well, he seems to like pretending to be a mouse or something, squeaking sometimes and making gestures while playing in the kitchen, and then taking his sandwiches under the kitchen table when he eats—I’m sure it’s just a phase, though.“

Remy had sat under the kitchen table with Alfredo, eating their grilled cheese sandwich with basil and tomato. He pondered what Alfredo’s mother was talking about, because he knew he wasn’t pretending to be a rat, he _was_ a rat, he had a family somewhere else, somewhere out in the country living in the attic of an old woman’s cottage, and sometimes he was pretty sure that he went back there, went back to that old home when he was sleeping in this body, but it was hard to tell because he couldn’t always remember it clearly when he woke up, and there wasn’t any way to prove it, really. He sucked the grease off his fingers and then was going to nudge Alfredo to start on the grooming of their face and ears when he realized that he…probably shouldn’t because grooming didn’t work the same on a not-rat body.

…but back to the multiple personality disorder.

The library was a wonderful place to find picture books about rats, which made Remy feel nostalgic and only a little homesick (only a little, because he loved where he was, and he knew his family could take care of themselves—they were rats, after all); you could also find cook books at the library, cook books with beautiful photographs and long lists of exotic ingredients; and also, the library was the place to go when you knew that you had two people sharing the same body, and you didn’t know what the word for that was.

Alfredo hadn’t been so sure about all of this, but Remy had kept badgering him with mental images of the library until Alfredo had given in.

Alfredo was always around in the body, even when Remy sometimes wasn’t. On good days, Alfredo thought of Remy as his little chef brother. On bad days, Alfredo accused Remy of acting like some kind of bossy puppet-master who enjoyed puppet-mastering other people.

See, Remy couldn’t do anything by himself. He had to work through Alfredo, and while Alfredo could do things by himself, Remy couldn’t, and when Remy was trying to learn how to do something new, and trying to do it through Alfredo, Alfredo came off looking like the clumsiest idiot in the world.

Like the first time they tried to make an omelet. They had gotten three eggs on the floor, and also on the stove, before Remy had figured out how to work with Alfredo in a coordinated way so that they could make themselves breakfast. Alfredo had cooperated because he was hungry and it was either the omelet or the leftover Chinese food in the fridge that was starting to smell a bit rancid.

They had looked up “possession” first at the library. Because Alfredo was still a bit mad at Remy for the whole bossy badgering business, but even Alfredo had to admit that possession probably wasn’t right. Remy wasn’t a spirit or a demon, he was just. He was just a Remy. He was just a rat. Also, Remy couldn’t do anything unless Alfredo cooperated—well, mostly, unless Remy jumped on Alfredo by surprise, getting him to do things the same way the doctor could get your leg to jerk up just by hitting the right nerve. They tried to avoid that though, because that really freaked Alfredo out and tended to end in broken dishes and such.

They also found a summarized account about the American named Sybil. Mostly it didn’t sound anything like what they experienced, and also the French commentary on the validity of the account was fairly derisive. They called it a purely “North American phenomenon, exacerbated by manipulation and hysteria”—whatever all of that meant. Alfredo was going to put the book back, except Remy stopped him. Remy got a pencil from the holder next to the card catalogue box, and then proceeded to underline the bits where these “personalities” said they had other lives, they were of different ages or backgrounds or identity from the body, but some of them could talk to each other and help each other out.

Then they had to drop everything and make a run for it, because the librarian was coming down on them like a bear for writing in the books.

\--

 _In a frenzy, Alfredo said, “I’m going to risk looking like the biggest idiot psycho you’ve ever seen; Colette, I have—“_

 _He was going to say that he had multiple personality disorder, and the other guy in his head was a rat, but the Little Chef had shoved Alfredo on Colette in an effort to get him to shut up._


End file.
